Seriously. Gesture based controls are hidden features. The whole point of visible UI buttons is that you can use a device without training. Moving to gestures is like moving back to a command line interface in terms of how much additional training you need to use them properly.

This is like when they changed the answer call UI from being big green and red buttons into a little white phone icon that you have to swipe left or right. I can only guess they made that change to prevent accidental pocket answers, but if so that was a band-aid fix and not the root cause of the problem.

Unpopular opinion, but honestly for all the praise Horizon Zero Dawn got, I felt the game design was very lacklustre in parts, climbing mechanics included. Art more than made up for it, but the world really felt empty to me with some really strange action RPG design decisions and a fairly glitchy camera system. Monster combat was great though, seems all the energy was focused there and the rest was rushed through.

Well they do have a lot of engineers onboard dedicated exclusively to improving the engine and keeping up with supported hardware platforms, as well as expanding the engine into new markets like virtual production, so it's not that surprising. But it's still a very impressive engineering effort overall I agree!